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Last Days of La Lunchonette, Pete's 2015 Favorites, and More Intel

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Telepan celebrates 10 years on the Upper West Side, plus more news and gossip from around NYC.

[Gallagher's Steakhouse in Midtown]
[Gallagher's Steakhouse in Midtown]
Daniel Krieger

27-year-old Chelsea French restaurant La Lunchonette is closing for good after service on New Year's Eve. Last fall, proprietor Melva Max said that she would have to be out by June, but she managed to push back the closing date. The restaurateur told Jeremiah Moss that when the High Line opened, real estate developers kept calling her landlord with offers. Max explained: "My landlord’s not a bad guy, but how you can you say no to offers of $30 million?"

Pete Wells's best restaurants of 2015 list includes Cosme, Momofuku Ko, Mission Chinese Food, Shuko, and Superiority Burger. The critic writes: "Before winding down into a disappointingly meager fall season, it was an excellent year for New York restaurants. I suspect that we’ll look back on 2015 as the high-water mark in postrecession dining." Wells also notes: "Superiority Burger is the most radical restaurant in New York. No other place has gone so far in the evolving experiment of stripping the dining experience to its core values."

— Today is Telepan's 10-year anniversary. To mark this occasion, Bill Telepan is putting together a special menu of dishes from the vault that guests have loved and requested over the years. He'll be serving 10 dishes from the archives as seven courses for $125 from January 6 to January 17. The team also put together a sweet look back at the people who have worked at the restaurant over the last decade.

— Eight businesses on West Broadway in Tribeca have to close by February, because several buildings are being torn down to make way for a luxury tower. 33-year-old dive the Raccoon Lounge is closing on New Year's Eve. Also on the chopping block: Mariachi's, Palermo Pizza, Saleya, Mangez Avec Moi, Cricketers Arms, and the New York Dolls strip club. The owners of the Raccoon Lounge are looking for a new space. The team from Saleya has already found a new home for the restaurant in Fort Greene. And Mariachi's will reopen next year at 156 Chambers Street.

Steve Cuozzo is smitten with Sadelle's. In a non-starred review, the Post critic calls Major Food Group's Soho establishment "the most charming new, big-league restaurant in many a moon."

The building that houses Hotel Chantelle just hit the market. The restaurant currently has five years left on its lease. The listing does not mention the asking price for the building, but it does explain that the broker is seeking someone who is "willing to wait out the lease term."

— An eight-top reservation at Rao's is up for auction right now for $11,250.

— The owners of the Halal Guys chain will open an outpost in Long Beach, CA on December 2.

Fort Greene bistro Chez Oskar is moving to 310 Malcolm X Boulevard in Bed-Stuy next May. The new dining room will be slightly smaller than the one in Fort Greene.

— And finally, here's a look at how Faicco's awesome soppressata is made:

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